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The Great Controversy by Ellen White (Unabridged Version)

For millennia, the powers of good and evil have clashed on the battlefield for the loyalties of men. In the great controversy, at stake are not only individual freedoms, liberty of conscience and freedom of worship, but also fulfillment of Bible prophecy and truth. From eternity past to significant historical moments such as the reformation, the enlightenment and the great awakening, several champions bravely take their stand for a cause greater than themselves. Chequered in religious oppression, infernal deception and crucial victories, this books seeks to connect the dots between Bible prophecy, spiritual mysteries and divine revelations, and traces the progress of world events from cataclysmic trauma to a wonderful culmination.

For millennia, the powers of good and evil have clashed on the battlefield for the loyalties of men. In the great controversy, at stake are not only individual freedoms, liberty of conscience and freedom of worship, but also fulfillment of Bible prophecy and truth. From eternity past to significant historical moments such as the reformation, the enlightenment and the great awakening, several champions bravely take their stand for a cause greater than themselves. Chequered in religious oppression, infernal deception and crucial victories, this books seeks to connect the dots between Bible prophecy, spiritual mysteries and divine revelations, and traces the progress of world events from cataclysmic trauma to a wonderful culmination.

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Page 265. Causes of the French Revolution.--On the far-reaching consequences of the<br />

rejection of the Bible and of Bible religion, <strong>by</strong> the people of France, see H. von Sybel, History<br />

of the French Revolution, b. 5, ch. 1, pars. 3-7; Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization<br />

in England, chs. 8 , 12, 14 (New York, 1895, vol. 1, pp. 364-366, 369-371, 437, 540, 541,<br />

550); Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 34, No. 215 (November, 1833), p. 739; J. G. Lorimer, An<br />

Historical Sketch of the Protestant Church in France, ch. 8, pars. 6, 7.<br />

Page 267. Efforts to Suppress and Destroy the Bible.--<strong>The</strong> Council of Toulouse, which<br />

met about the time of the crusade against the Albigenses, ruled: "We prohibit laymen<br />

possessing copies of the Old and New Testament. . . . We forbid them most severely to have<br />

the above books in the popular vernacular." "<strong>The</strong> lords of the districts shall carefully seek out<br />

the heretics in dwellings, hovels, and forests, and even their underground retreats shall be<br />

entirely wiped out."--Concil. Tolosanum, Pope Gregory IX, Anno. chr. 1229. Canons 14 and<br />

2. This Council sat at the time of the crusade against the Albigenses.<br />

"This pest [the bible] had taken such an extension that some people had appointed<br />

priests of their own, and even some evangelists who distorted and destroyed the truth of the<br />

gospel and made new gospels for their own purpose . . . (they know that) the preaching and<br />

explanation of the Bible is absolutely forbidden to the lay members."--Acts of Inquisition,<br />

Philip van Limborch, History of the Inquisition, chapter 8.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Council of Tarragona, 1234, ruled that: "No one may possess the books of the Old<br />

and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn<br />

them over to the local bishop within eight days after promulgation of this decree, so that they<br />

may be burned lest, be he a cleric or a layman, he be suspected until he is cleared of all<br />

suspicion."--D. Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible en France, 1910, p. 14.<br />

At the Council of Constance, in 1415, Wycliffe was posthumously condemned <strong>by</strong><br />

Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury, as "that pestilent wretch of damnable heresy who<br />

invented a new translation of the Scriptures in his mother tongue."<br />

<strong>The</strong> opposition to the Bible <strong>by</strong> the Roman Catholic Church has continued through the<br />

centuries and was increased particularly at the time of the founding of Bible societies. On<br />

December 8, 1866, Pope Pius IX, in his encyclical Quanta cura, issued a syllabus of eighty<br />

errors under ten different headings. Under heading IV we find listed: "Socialism, communism,<br />

clandestine societies, Bible societies. . . . Pests of this sort must be destroyed <strong>by</strong> all possible<br />

means."<br />

484

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